Leveson inquiry: Harry Evans, Peter Oborne appear

• Evans: Murdoch and I almost came to fisticuffs at my house
• Extraordinary that Times takeover never went to MMC
• Papers are hiring detectives – we used to hire reporters
• PCC didn't have the power to frighten a goose
• Oborne: make political lying an offence

Today the inquiry will hear from former Sunday Times editor Sir Harold Evans and Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne.

We will cover the inquiry live from 10am.

Please note that comments have been switched off for legal reasons.

Leveson inquiry: Peter Oborne

10.03am: The inquiry has got under way and Peter Oborne takes the stand.

David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, is going the questioning.

10.06am: Barr turns to Oborne's book, The Rise of Political Lying, in which he quotes Tony Blair as saying: "The truth becomes almost impossible to communicate because total frankness relayed in the shorthand of the mass media becomes simply a weapon in the hands of opponents."

Might be translated by some as admitting it's too dangerous to tell the whole truth. Is that your understanding, asks Barr.

"It explains quite a lot of the conduct of Mr Blair," says Oborne.

10.10am: Oborne says it was a result of the media's perceived poisonous attitude towards Neil Kinnock, which in turn informed new Labour's approach to the media.

10.15am: Oborne says: "What we had when New Labour emerged was a new epistemology. Truth was seen as something that served the purposes of the government in power. It wasn't a rigorously tested empirical truth ... they were interested in truth as it served their political purposes."

"Denials and assertions became an instrument of government rather than an instrument of telling the truth."

10.20am: Barr is lifting several quotes from various of Oborne's books. He now moves on to the issue of a free press.

Oborne says the purpose of a free press is to "inform, entertain and enable people to make judgments on the issues of the day and the government".

10.23am: Oborne says: "If newspapers were written in the manner of an article in a philosophical journey nobody would read them, and I think vehemently pronounced opinions, including unfair opinions, including caricature are all part of what makes for a free press.

"They are tools which the press can use. But it would be a grave distortion to suggest they were habitual or the natural posture of the press towards those in power.

Oborne replies: "In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, too many British papers remained silent on the issue of British complicity in torture although the Guardian picked it up late in the last decade there was a long time when evidence of British malpractice there was kind of an omerta.

"Even on the issue of this inquiry, silence on phone hacking on the part of a number of British newspapers is culpable."

10.30am: Leveson says it is a recurring theme of the inquiry: "The press holds everyone to account but nobody holds the press to account."

Oborne responds: "The history of the reporting of the phone hacking saga argues strongly for that but also against - there was pretty well an omerta in Fleet Street surrounding the very troubling evidence about phone hacking.

"At the end of the day it was the Guardian newspaper and in particular Nick Davies who industriously worked away and started to get to the truth."

10.33am: Leveson suggests the reason other newspapers ignored it "may be because it was rather more commonplace and not seen as the issue that it later became clear it was".

Oborne says: "It's very dangerous to get involved in speculation. Anyone who was to suggest the reason why rival newspaper groups were unwilling to report phone hacking at News International because they themselves participated in it would need to provide evidence of that or that it was the motive even if they did.

"You have to be very careful about attributing motive. There was a reluctance of one newspaper group to embarrass another."

10.34am: Leveson asks if that reluctance is restricted to phone hacking or any issue.

Oborne says: "I certainly think that is one of the abominable characteristics of Fleet Street over the last 20 or 30 years, it goes back to the Maxwell business when Maxwell was quite clearly a crook and only the Wall Street Journal hinted at it towards the end of his life. The rest of Fleet Street looked the other way.

"To the Guardian's eternal credit it stood outside that system. It's been weakened a little bit by blogs and Private Eye has played a fantastically important cleansing function in the last 30 or 40 years with material that has not found its way into mainstream publications."

Leveson says Private Eye has also been publishing stories during the Leveson inquiry that newspapers did not touch.

Oborne says there is "one defence. Mainstream newspapers, the Sun or the Daily Mail, take the view their readers are not interested in the mechanics or hypocrisies of its rivals."

10.35am: Oborne is asked about the MPs' expenses scandal, as revealed by the Telegraph.

He says: "The whole expenses scam went on for years and years and the press was not interested. Even when the DVD or whatever it was, was for sale it was turned down by quite a lot of papers until to its great credit the Telegraph picked it up and started to deal with it.

"The parliamentary lobby became too close to MPs."

Barr asks if members of the press lobby knew about the scale of the expenses scandal and chose not to cover it.

Oborne replies: "I'm not saying that. But there kept on being evidence of expenses scams bubbling to the surface for a long long time before the publication of all the details. And the political journalists with almost no exceptions just ignored that."

10.40am: Oborne says the press has also "massively underreported" issues in Afghanistan – "illegal killing, use of drones, human rights abuses … I haven't read a single thing about that in a number of our papers."

He makes an exception for Guardian reporter Ian Cobain, who he says has been "exemplary".

10.41am: Leveson asks Oborne again about the relationship between politicians and the lobby journalists.

"There was a very significant cultural change towards the end of the 20th century in the relationship between politicians and journalists. If you go back 50 years, I was told by one old timer when Harold Wilson went into a press conference, in 12 Downing Street, the press stood up. Deference was steadily replaced by familiarity. There was something to be said for that deference because it brought with it distance."

By time Oborne arrived on scene he says he was "staggered" by the closeness.

"It was ceasing to be a conversation between activists and politicians but between the media and the politicians. The News International annual party at the Tory and Labour conference was an extraordinary power event to which people were excluded. Unfortunately I never got in. But you got the entire cabinet and all the influence brokers and the senior members of the media class, it was a very important statement I felt about how Britain was being governed.

"And then you got the astonishing business of the senior News International people sitting just behind the Cabinet. They were the VIPs in the chamber, I believe really important media types were there as well, they were brought into the inner sanctum. I felt this was a perversion of our democracy, it was starting to become a private conversation between elite groups rather than a proper popular engagement."

10.45am: Oborne says political reporting had become "private deals, private arrangements, between media and politicians. There are all kinds of problems with that system. One of them is that white papers, parliamentary debates, are no longer covered in a serious way that they used to be. I think it is highly desirable for the sake of our democracy to return to a much greater distance between the politicians and the press."

He adds that of course there must be a relationship between politicians and the press. "The mistake was to turn that into a social relationship."

Oborne describes it as a "conspiracy against their readers" and he "felt very deeply that was not the way to do it."

Leveson says: "Conspiracy against the readers? That puts it very high."

Oborne says: "That's exactly what was going on. Some papers did stand out against it. The Daily Telegraph, political editor George Jones, was fastidious but he was also frozen out. In order to report during that time you had to get close to the people who ran new Labour, there were very few of them. If you didn't do that, George Jones was particularly the victim of that.

"People who tried to report objectively and fairly were bullied and victimised and not given access to information. People who were part of the circle were favoured and of course there was a price for that. Very hard to be an independent observer, to keep your integrity in those circumstances."

10.47am: Oborne says collusion between politicians and the press was one of the reasons why the public was so "grievously misinformed" about the threat from Iraq" in the runup to war.

He says the Hutton inquiry "failed to examine properly the way in which respectable newspapers became instruments of a political faction in a mission to tell falsehoods and mistruths to the British people."

10.53am: Oborne turns to the "knowingness" of politicians who become part of the political process, dealing with the press, early in their careers, referencing George Osborne, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and others.

"Mingling very early with the press creates a particular social structure," he says. "There is a lot to be said for people who come in at the age of 35 or 40."

11.00am: Oborne is asked about a Guardian article, published shortly after 9/11, which he said quoted the Qur'an out of context.

He said the author of the piece had told him she "wouldn't have written the piece today".

Barr says the article is still online and asks if there a problem with that.

Oborne: "I would say it would have been, if something is written that is wrong or misleading, then I think you should correct the website. It is increasingly common practice to do that. In defence of the journalist I doubt that article is consulted by many people."

11.04am: Leveson says stories going online is "leading to greater accountability for journalists. People will study them, and I think there's no reporter - no decent reporter - in the land who would not welcome this extra scrutiny."

11.05am: Leveson says he will use this opportunity to say that "almost every reporter in the land is indeed decent".

He says some people have suggested he's not said this enough.

"I'm not saying there aren't exceptions. The majority of journalism is people doing their job honourably with dedication, fearlessly and entirely in the public interest".

Leveson clarifies that he is talking about the "majority" of journalists.

11.07am: Leveson continues: "Let's not make this too much of an advertisement. I am merely making clear that the bulk of the work that is done does not fall within the category of that work which you have spent time criticising."

11.08am: Oborne says he "sometimes fails to understand why my colleagues went into journalism. Instead of wanting to tell the truth or upset powerful people which I think is very important they suck up to people and bow their heads rather than tell the truth about injustice".

11.10am: Leveson says it is important he does not "tar with the same brush" all journalists with Oborne's criticism, using regional journalists keeping the community informed as an example. "I am trying to keep a balance," he says.

11.11am: Oborne says it was "pretty clear" that David Cameron in the early years of his Tory leadership took a "strategic decision that they would treat Rupert Murdoch at a distance. There would be none of the collusion that was a feature of the Blair and Brown premierships."

He says there was a "lack of interest at cabinet level" after Tessa Jowell and John Prescott were told their phones were hacked to investigate alleged illegal practices at News International.

11.17am: On the power of the media to force politicians out of office, Oborne says: "There has been a myth created by politicians for reasons which I find slightly strange, they have attributed enormous power to the media which it does not possess.

"The media can't get rid of a minister, the prime minister has the power to do that."

He says nobody was calling for Lord Mandelson to be sacked second time round – "there was a panic in Downing Street" and the media "was not particular pressing" the first time round either.

If a PM sacks a minister because of headlines in the press he "doesn't deserve to be prime minister", says Oborne.

11.35am: Barr says Oborne, in his witness statement, says the "social apartheid" that used to exist between journalists and politicians should be restored. But, asks Barr, does this risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

"Something's gone wrong with the way politics is reported," says Oborne. "If you go to the House of Commons chamber, it is quite often empty. Brilliant speeches are made an unreported but some sort of furtive lunch may end up as a bitchy piece by a colleague."

Oborne says he is "quite sympathetic" with the idea that there should be a register of "connections" between journalists and MPs. He says important debates, white papers and the such go unreported.

"Reporting of British politics has become too 'inside', too much of a conspiracy," he says.

Barr says newspapers don't have the resources to cover parliamentary affairs in the way Oborne would like.

11.37am: Oborne says a "politician may have very little talent but a very effective press machine and may be presented to the world at large as a man of extraordinary capacity when the reality is very different".

11.39am: Oborne says newspapers have directed resources to columnists like him rather than people on the ground digging up news stories. He says it is a trend he "feels slightly guilty about".

Oborne says "virtually all of the budget was leaked presumably by the government to the newspapers. The speaker of the House of Commons is in a position to come down like a ton of bricks on them. It's a breach of House of Commons rules, George Osborne should have resigned, but there was no criticism, or very little.

He says parliament has an opportunity to "reassert its traditional function as the main source of news about executive decision-making".

11.43am: Oborne, in his witness statement, says newspapers are "arguably justified in carrying out criminal acts when it is in the public interest".

Leveson says his statement is qualified by saying "arguably". Oborne says he wants to "withdraw the weasel word 'arguably' … an error in drafting".

11.47am: What about phone or email hacking, asks Leveson. Bribery? "Would you like to insert the word arguably again?"

Oborne says he'll leave it out and brings up the example of the MPs' expenses scandal.

It's not a good example, says Leveson, because Telegraph was told it wasn't breaking the law by buying the disc.

"Let's say they hacked a phone, I'd still say it was justified," says Oborne.

11.51am: Oborne continues: "If there are cases where there is corruption within government, within police, unheard of I know corruption within the judiciary, where the state is complicit in crime itself and it is necessary to break ... bribing, phone hacking, necessary to obtain documents which proved some terrible scandal, I would defend [it] very strongly."

Leveson he says they may not disagree. "But then you have set the bar very high."

Oborne replies: "I absolutely accept your point the bar must be high, and there must be a proper process before this breach of the law takes place."

11.54am: Oborne says of tabloid newsdesks: "Of course they are going to be aggressive, of course they are going to seek advantage. Long may that last. There is a real spirit to it, you have got to be a certain type of person. I can very well understand if someone at the end of the day called in front of a leading judge, they may find they have behaved in a way that they may find regrettable. I do understand that. Any walk of life has some pretty, you know, stuff going on."

Leveson responds: "Of course they are going to try and scoop their rivals" but suggests it should not be a "no-holds-barred business". He says he understands people making mistakes "and sometimes they will get it wrong". But it doesn't alter the base to which people return. "The alternative is, actually it's all right to do whatever I like."

12.02pm: Oborne says there has been a "collapse" in standards and suggests a "standing committee" in each paper to discuss and sanction any illegal conduct.

"When we look back at the astonishing events of the last few years, what we've discovered, much of it was done through failure to enforce existing laws. By the police and a collapse of proper systems within newspapers."

Leveson interrupts: "The fact that speeding is illegal doesn't enable motorists to say it's not my fault I'm speeding, the police should enforce the speeding law. Inevitably there are going to be restraints on what the police can do. I am obviously going to have to think about it, several people have advanced the proposition you just have."

12.02pm: Oborne says he "does not entirely agree ... it seems to me there was a gross failure by the Met police to investigate clear evidence of criminal behaviour".

Leveson says that's not the question: "Do you agree it's not appropriate for press to say it's primarily a question of law enforcement. Should we trust the press to enforce the law without a policeman standing by their shoulder to ensure they do?"

"Yes," says Oborne.

12.13pm: Oborne in his evidence says "political lying" should be a crime. "We would have to set a very high bar for political lying to be a crime. Politicians I have noticed freely do make entirely false statements about how they are conducting themselves and why you should vote for them."

He says clearly some licence had to be given but would be a welcome move, including for political journalists.

Barr suggests it would be very difficult to define such an offence. Oborne disagrees and says part of the problem is that there is no language in the House of Commons to call someone a liar. "They can't be challenged on the floor of the House of Commons because it is assumed they are honest man. It is a false assumption."

But what about the practical difficulties, asks Barr. Oborne admits he's "not an expert".

Leveson says it would be an "enormously chilling effect" to include political journalists.

He says he has operated great restraint when meeting politicians to avoid entering a "Faustian bargain".

2.41pm: Evans says that in the 1970s newspapers constantly faced "external restraints" such as libel law, the law of confidence and the Official Secrets Act. However, there was no law to stop prurient invasions of privacy.

He describes as "absolutely ludicrous" some of the challenges faced by his newspapers, including one where the journalist had to go to US – which had greater free speech laws than the UK – to investigate a story. He says Britain in the 70s had a "half-free press".

2.45pm: Evans is asked about Rupert Murdoch's meeting with Margaret Thatcher about the mogul's purchase of the Times in 1981.

He says it was astounding the fact of this meeting only became public in March this year – and claims that Murdoch had previously denies it.

Evans was part of a management buyout group hoping to take over the Sunday Times.

2.49pm: Evans praises Sir Denis Hamilton, the former editor-in-chief of the Times publisher Times Newspapers and ex-editor of the Sunday Times.

Hamilton was vehement in his condemnation of Rupert Murdoch, he says.

Robert Jay QC highlights a minute of a meeting on 20 January 1981 noting that Murdoch was the preferred Times bidder, unless editors preferred Associated Newspapers or Tiny Rowland's Lonhro.

A poll of the Sunday Times NUJ chapel voted as follows: 37 in favour of Murdoch; 32 for Associated; and 11 for Lonhro.

2.52pm: Evans describes it as the "saddest moment of my life" when Murdoch sacked Hamilton as Times Newspapers chairman.

He says Hamilton was the creative genius behind the Sunday Times and describes himself as the "lucky inheritor".

Times journalists mistakenly believed the Murdoch takeover bid would be blocked by a regulator, Evans says.

2.55pm: Murdoch was viewed as the best person to tackle the print unions before his Times takeover, Evans says.

However, Australian staff on the Sunday Times told Evans that Murdoch was not to be trusted.

3.00pm: Evans says that it was widely thought that the Murdoch bid for the Times would go to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission as no one knew about the secret Thatcher lunch.

He adds that it is ridiculous that a takeover that was that important in British press history did not go to the MMC.

3.03pm: Evans says it is disgraceful that Thomson's balance sheets relating to the Sunday Times were not properly scutinised.

He was "horrified" that the takeover never went to the MMC. "It's really the most extraordinary event. None of us were pleased," he says.

3.05pm: Evans says columnist Woodrow Wyatt was "initimately close" to Thatcher and acted as a go-between with Murdoch.

3.11pm: Jay notes that the trade secretary, John Biffen, decided not to refer Murdoch's takeover of the Times and Sunday Times to the MMC.

3.15pm: Evans describes the Times takeover as a "seminal moment" after Leveson says he has to consider how the 1981 event has influenced the present media.

Evans says Murdoch's Times takeover is relevant because it shows "the manifestations of the same culture of too close a connection between one powerful media group and politicians".

He says the incident reflects the "inertia" and "collusion" that has continued to affect British politics and the media.

Thatcher intervened to help Murdoch set up Sky TV, he says, adding: "Everybody fell over, because they are terrified of him [Murdoch]."

3.20pm: Murdoch was "just the kind of owner one would like" for his first six months in charge of the Sunday Times, Evans says.

3.21pm: However, by late autumn 1981 the British economy was in a recession and Thatcher's economic policies were not working, says Evans.

He adds Murdoch rebuked him for insisting on reporting the gloomy economic news and "not doing what he wants, in political terms".

Evans says that Murdoch came to his home to meet his wife, and the two almost ended up in fisticuffs over a piece on the economy.

3.24pm: Murdoch would also haul in senior staff for meetings to tell them to alter their coverage, including the editorial line of the leader columns and telling the foreign editor to "attack the Russians more".

On another occasion, Murdoch told Evans that the Sunday Times should be writing less about Poland.

3.29pm: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Evans: Murdoch & I "almost came to fisticuffs" because RM furious Times ran piece by [anti-monestarist]James Tobin #Leveson

3.29pm: Evans says the final straw for him and journalists was when Murdoch increased the number of redundancies needed at the Times without telling him.

He says Murdoch had broken all five of his promises to parliament about the Times takeover.

"I got somewhat emotional about this because it seemed like such a betrayal," he adds.

Evans adds that he wrote a letter of protest about the situation.

Rupert Murdoch. Photograph: PA Archive

3.33pm: By 1982, Evans was describing Murdoch as "evil incarnate", as revealed by Hugo Young papers submitted to Leveson. "He had his heart removed long ago along with moral faculties and human sensibilities."